


tastes like fucking sunshine

by lavenderlotion



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Masturbation, Peter Parker is Seventeen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie) Spoilers, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 12:02:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19723285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion
Summary: “Please? Please, Happy, I need you—” and that does it. That’s always done it for Happy.





	tastes like fucking sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> I saw FFH, didn’t like it, got home, and wrote this from start to finish in two hours. I did the barest of editing and it is unbeta’d, but I had to get this out before going to bed.

The kid reminds him of Tony, s’all it is. It’s the only reason he sticks around after everything falls apart. The only reason he still answers the phone when the kid calls, still does him favours and answers his silly little questions. It’s the only reason he helps out, in the little ways that he can. The only reason he gets to Queens at the ass crack of dawn just so Peter won’t have to take the subway into school. 

Peter reminds him of Tony, with all of his big words and bright ideas and the  _ need  _ he has to  _ help, _ to be  _ good. _ With his big eyes and his power and his excited ramblings ‘bout shit Happy won’t ever understand. Peter reminds him of Tony, with the grief in which he carries like a birthright, with the trauma responses and the panic attacks and the idea that no matter what he does, it wasn’t ever enough. 

Reminds him of Tony with the taking on too much, taking on more than they should because they feel like they have to protect the entire damn world all by themselves. With the bright fucking eyes, and the charming smile, and the pretty little dimples and—

Happy cuts himself off, focusing back on the surrounding traffic, switching lanes just to give himself something to focus on so he doesn’t have to worry about his wandering thoughts. Peter reminds him of Tony, and that’s the only reason he keeps answering the calls, every damn day, and why he doesn’t let  _ any _ of them go to voicemail. Peter reminds him of Tony, and that’s all that fucking matters. It’s the only reason he cares. 

It’s what Happy tells himself, what Happy is going to  _ keep _ telling himself, if only to stay sane. 

* * *

His phone rings twice before he answers it. During the second ring, his heart kicks up inside his chest even as he groans, and he takes a deep breath to try to get his heavy breathing under control despite the nervous fluttering in his stomach. He has to slide his slick finger across the screen twice before he can move the phone to his ear.

“Kid? You okay?” Happy asks, just like he does every time he answers one of Peter’s calls at a weird time. A shiver runs over his body when the cool air from his fan catches his skin, the dampness freezing now that his hand has stopped moving. 

“I-I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Peter sniffles, and Happy knows it’s been another nightmare. His eyes fall closed, and he pictures it before he can stop himself—Peter, face flushed and eyes wet, in nothing but a skimpy pair of briefs, tangled up in sheets and hair all mused. “I’m sorry, Mr. Happy. I shouldn't have called.”

“No, no Peter, you’re fine,” Happy tells him, biting into his bottom lip so hard copper slides down his tongue.  _ Fuck _ , but the boy sounds so sweet. He tightens his hold on himself to the point where it  _ hurts _ , and he lets out a breath through clenched teeth when the shock of pain finally helps him calm down. “You can call anytime, you know that.”

“I k-know you keep saying that, I just. I guess it’s a little hard to believe I guess, sometimes, ya know because why would you just be around to answer my calls all the time. I’m sure you’ve got a life and a bunch of things that keep you all busy and I’m just a kid and I—”

“Peter,” Happy cuts in, but the smile that curves his lips is fond, and he fucking knows it. God, he’s so gone it’s ridiculous. “Peter, I care about you. I care about what happens to you. And if you need me, I'm going to pick up my phone, you got it?”

It’s quiet over the line save for a hitch in the boy’s breath that makes his cock twitch. He’s not as hard as he was, not after so long without stimulation and getting closer and closer to fifty, but the little skip in Peter’s breathing brings him right back up to full mast. “Thank you, Mr. Happy,” he says sweetly, and damn him but he sounds delicious.

“It’s not a problem, Peter,” because it’s been Peter for a while now, ever since the kid came back home and Tony didn’t. “But it’s late, and you should be sleeping.”

“You should be sleeping too, Mr. Happy,” Peter teases, and Happy barks out a laugh. “Sure kid,” he says fondly, stretching out his back, hand still wrapped around himself. “You get some sleep, alright?”

“Alright, Mr. Happy. Sweet dreams,” Peter tells him sweetly, the words bringing to mind a rather vivid image of the boy in bed  _ with  _ him, whisperin’ those words against his lips before they fall asleep together. 

“Yeah, you too kid,” Happy says. The dial tone rings out, his phone drops back onto the bed, and it takes seven strokes till he’s making a mess all over his fucking stomach. 

* * *

He tries with May. He really does. He flirts back and he helps out when she needs it, but every couple of nights, when he breaks out the lube and takes himself in hand, it isn’t an age-appropriate,  _ gorgeous _ woman that has him coming harder than he has in a decade. It’s a teenage boy, a fucking kid, and it leaves him sick, each and every time. 

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t think he could  _ ever _ stop, but he keeps it to his own head and hand. Happy isn’t a predator, no matter the way he feels for Peter. He isn’t going to hurt him, not because he—

Fuck. He’s so fucked.

* * *

Happy has the back door open before he even sees Peter. Driving the boy isn’t his job, not really, but it’s been a few days since Happy’s heard from him and it’s been making him antsy. Pepper had even picked up on it, damn her constant vigilance, and sent him back to the city. Happy had managed to make it to Midtown and shoot off a quick text just before the final school bell rang, and just the chatter of students is making the nervous tension in his belly ease. 

When he spots Peter, he slams the back door and switches to holding open the passenger. The kid looks fucking rough, and something in Happy’s chest goes very tight and very angry, seein’ the boy look so defeated.  _ No one _ should be making Peter look like that, not when Happy’s around, and he has to remind himself that he can’t beat up teenagers just because they’re bothering the  _ teenager _ he has fucking feelings for. 

What has his shit hole of a life become?

By the time Peter gets to him, he looks even worse. From up close, Happy can see that his hair is shiny and unwashed and that his lips are chapped to hell. There’s darkness under his eyes that happy assumed the kids super healing would deal with, and his cheekbones look more cutting than they should. Fuck, he looks rough. 

“Hi, Mr. Happy,” the boy says quietly. Too quietly. It makes Happy’s chest ache and he doesn’t have a single idea on how to make anything better.

“Hey kid,” he says cautiously, holding the door open a little wider when the boy just stands there in front of him. “Bad day?”

Peter nods. He doesn’t say anything, but then a minute later he’s stepping forward and pressing his face into the silk of Happy’s dress shirt, fitting their bodies together better than Happy ever could have thought possible. He has to bite down on a damn moan and keep his hand firmly at his side so he doesn’t do something stupid like grab the kid’s hip and tug him even closer.

Fuck, he wants to, but instead he pats the boy’s back slowly, more of a caress than an actual pat, but it’s as much as he allows himself. 

Thankfully, the boy steps back before Happy’s dick can take an interest in having them pressed up together the way they are. When the kid looks up, his eyes are red and wet. Without thinking, Happy thumbs away a tear before letting his hand fall. 

“Damn kid,” he mumbles, then feels like shit when Peter’s face falls even further. Thinking as quick as he can, he offers, “How ‘bout we go for ice cream today, hey? That sound good?”

Peter’s stomach rumbles and it breaks the tension that Happy doesn’t even want to admit to being there. He laughs, and he pats Peter on his back and doesn’t watch his ass as he finally gets into the car, and he closes the door so very gently after him. 

* * *

“So man, you seein’ anyone?” The colonel asks. Happy’s on his third beer, and it’s the only damn reason he hesitates with his denial. “My man!” Rhodes exclaims, clapping his shoulder and grinning like he only does after a few drinks. “That’s great, man.”

“M’not seeing anyone,” he says into his beer. It’s the truth. Hell, it’s more than the truth. He’s not seeing anyone and there isn’t anyone he wants to be seeing. 

The bar they’re in is even less than seedy, but it’s comfortable. They’re nobodies, sitting in a bar full of nobodies, and Happy can pretend when he’s here and drinking with Rhodes that he’s just sneaking away from Tony for a night spent on his own. That he’s just getting a beer with a buddy, and that the world never ended and started back up again. He can pretend that Tony is still alive and that he isn’t the worst type of scumbag there is. 

“Then you got your eye on someone,” Rhodes teases, and Happy cuts him a glare. They aren’t close, weren’t before Tony and won’t be now that he’s gone, but they were Tony’s two best friends. “S’all good man. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with moving on.”

“There’s no one,” Happy tells him firmly. It’s the truth. It has to be the truth, even if Happy is thinking about bright brown eyes and floppy hair and pretty, pink cheeks. “There’s no one.”

* * *

The next time Happy’s phone rings later than all hell, he’s actually asleep. “‘Lo?” he rumbles into the phone, his voice scratching out of his throat. It’s nearly four in the goddamn morning, but the hiccuping sob that greets him melts away every ounce of irritation he feels before it can take form into anger. “Kid?” gets him nothing, so he tries gently asking, “Pete?”

“H-Happy,” the kid cries, the tone of his voice breaking Happy’s fucking  _ heart. _

Pure panic grips his chest and his heart stops. A million scenarios run through his mind, each one worse than the last, but the one that finally has his mouth moving is the image of a bruised, broken Peter calling him to mutter his last words.

“Peter, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Is it May?” Happy bolts up in bed, already throwing the covers off him and making his way about his room. He taps into his safe as he hears Peter breathe heavily over the line, pulling out a loaded thigh holster that he slips on with one hand. Peter hasn’t said anything by the time Happy is slipping into a pair of sandals and crouching down to button the backs. 

His hand is on the door handle when Peter  _ finally _ says something, but the words make his heart stop. “I need you. Happy, I need you.”

“I’m on my way, kid.”

* * *

Happy has a key. He lets himself in and feels like a fucking creep doing it. He knows the way to Peter’s room, and he navigates the small apartment in his pyjamas, not having wasted time with getting dressed before he was in his car and driving down New York like a mad man. 

Knocking gently, he pushes the door open and almost hopes that Peter is asleep. The kid isn’t, and it just makes things worse. He can hear the boy crying, and he stops in the doorway to Peter’s bedroom, every bit aware of the  _ thirty-fucking-years _ between the two of them. 

“Happy,” the boy says, and his voice breaks. It’s the last thing he needs before he’s closing the door behind himself and crossing the room. Peter’s little single bed hardly fits the boy, and it sure as  _ hell _ doesn’t fit Happy comfortably, but he forces himself onto the mattress as Peter clings to him and cries, curling up above him with his face pressed into his chest and soaking the fabric with his grief. 

The kids rocking, whispering,  _ “I miss him, Hap, I miss him,” _ and Happy’s heart breaks in half. He has no fucking idea what to do, no idea how to make any of it better, but he holds the boy in his arms and he runs his hand up and down his bare back, and he’s fucking thankful he’s old enough to ignore the feeling of so much warm, tight skin laying over him. 

He mumbles nonsense until the kid stops crying and starts breathing deeply. Happy has no idea if this is any better, knowing that the boy has exhausted him into passing out, but at least he doesn’t have to hear the boy cry. Happy just holds him, silently, rubbing his back as the kid sniffles into his chest and cuddles up to him, enjoying the foreign weight laid out over top of him and wondering what type of hell with await him for the way he commits every moment of having Peter in his arms to memory. 

* * *

Peter shows up at his apartment unannounced. He does this, sometimes. Has been doing it more and more since everything went down over the summer and his identity was almost revealed. It had taken a lot of strings and a lot of time to get Mysterio’s full crew taken out, but the last remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D had done it. 

Happy thought his idea of playing up Peter’s internship to fake jealousy in the hearts of two dozen ex-Stark Industry employees was a rather excellent idea. After all, it  _ worked, _ and with a bit of technology and acting, Peter’s identity was once again separate from Spider-Man’s. That didn’t mean the brief time in which it had been revealed hadn’t been awful, and Happy knew that Peter had come to see his apartment as a safe place ever since. 

“To what do I owe this great pleasure?” he drawls out from the kitchen, not bothering to turn around as he continues with getting a pot of coffee going. It’s Sunday, so Peter didn’t have school for Happy to drive him to—he’s a  _ senior _ now. It’s fucking crazy. 

“Happy,” Peter says, and the tone in his voice has the man turning around. “We need to talk.”

Happy raises a brow but otherwise says nothing as he clicks on the coffee maker. He makes his way into the living room and sits himself in his big, comfy chair, feeling like Peter might have a lot to say—if the way the boy is wringing his hands together is anything to go by. The kid has a couple nervous ticks, but the way he’s all but attacking his cuticle is the most obvious of ‘em. 

“We need to talk about us,” Peter says, rather boldly for him, and Happy’s heart stops. 

“What do you mean, kid?” he asks, using the name as a reminder that Peter, despite all that he is,  _ is _ young. It doesn’t seem to deter him, not like Happy would have liked, and the kid walks up until he’s standing right between Happy’s thighs, the outside of Peter’s feet touching the inside of his own. 

“I’m seventeen,” Peter tells him, and his voice is as steady as the steel in his eyes. Happy snorts, because he was at the damn party, but he waits for Peter to continue as dreads climbs up his stomach. “I’m a legal adult in New York.”

Happy snorts again, and he does nothing when the kid flinches. It’s impossible to pretend that he doesn’t know what Peter’s getting at, not after the last few weeks,  _ fuck, _ the last few months. They’d been getting closer still since the summer, and Happy  _ knew _ they’d been spending too much time together. But he’d always been weak when it came to Peter, and he hadn’t put a stop to it. 

Hadn’t even put a stop to the late night and early morning calls, to the touching and the intimacy and the fucking  _ cuddling. _ He hadn’t put a stop to the flirting, not like he’d done with May all those months ago, and he hadn’t ever flirted back but he...yeah, he sure as hell never stopped it.

He lets out a long breath that leaves him feeling ancient, rubbing over his face and scratching through his goatee. When he looks back up, he hides nothing in his face, and Peter’s eyes widen. “Legal, maybe, but sure as hell not fucking ethical.”

“I’m old enough to make my own choices,” the kid spits his words like venom, and Happy can  _ hear _ the grief in his voice, knows he’s telling the truth. 

“I know you are,” Happy tells him, his lips twitching up into a smile at the familiar ire in his voice despite the situation at hand. “What about that girl you give the necklace to, huh?” he asks, and his voice is a desperate plea that cuts out when the boy  _ crawls into his lap _ . Happy steadies him, hands gripping his thighs too tightly, fingers digging into the fabric of his jeans, a pair that must be new since Happy doesn’t remember seeing them before, and he looks up into the prettiest pair of eyes he’s ever seen as he tries to stop himself from giving in to a desire that feels more like it’s ruining his life than anything else. 

“Please? Please, Happy, I  _ need _ you—” and that does it. That’s always done it for Happy. He surges forward and takes Peter’s sweet, bitten lips in a kiss that  _ aches. _

“Fuck,  _ Peter,” _ he moans, kissing and kissing and sliding his work-roughened fingers over the boy’s flushed,  _ smooth _ cheeks and into his hair so he can pull him even closer. The boy whines, the most enticing sound Happy has ever fucking heard, and kisses him back wet and sloppy like he has no idea what the hell he’s doing.

Happy realizes he probably  _ doesn’t _ , and he pulls back to gentle the slide of their mouths into something sweet and innocent, something that Peter seems more comfortable with. The boy’s hips roll into his own, their thighs pressing together tightly as fingers curl into his hair and tug. Happy laughs, a booming thing that throws his head back and shakes through his belly, and he lets his hands run down Peter’s tight little body to grab his hips, fitting his fingers against his hip bones and feeling just how well they fit together. 

When he finally opens his eyes, Peter’s smile is blinding, the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen, and he tells him so. The boy blushes, stutters his thanks and kisses him again, and Happy forgets about every reason why this is a  _ terrible fucking idea, _ and gets lost in  _ his _ boy’s sweet mouth and the way his laughter tastes like fucking  _ sunshine. _

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are much appreciated!   
> come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://lavender-lotion.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
